"Do you?"
She did. She had known at her desk that afternoon, signing a grant letter, watching the minute hand and telling herself that Jason's text — Stuck in Cheyenne, site walk moved, back tomorrow noon, kiss Soph for me — was a door and not a wound. She had known when she texted Andre, House is empty. Come at eight. Don't bring flowers, the neighbors. She had known, and she had called the knowing by other names: loneliness, a mistake she was already inside, a hunger that did not cancel the love, a night stolen from a marriage that had become a series of competent goodbyes. The anniversary had been in her calendar in blue, the color she used for family. She had looked at the blue and chosen the man anyway.
Richard cleared his throat. "Son," he said, and the word was for Jason, whom he had loved with the awkward steadfastness of a father-in-law who does not understand sports but understands paychecks and lawns. "I think Daniel's right. This isn't a kitchen conversation. Carol and I will go to the hotel."
"We have the spare room," Jason said automatically, and then heard himself offering a bed in a house that had just become a crime scene of the heart. He stopped. "No. You're right. The hotel."
Carol stood. Tears had tracked through her powder without her permission. She looked at her daughter the way a woman looks at a version of herself she cannot disown. "I don't know what to say to you."
"Then don't say it tonight," Rachel said, and it came out sharper than she meant, a blade turned inward that caught her mother on the way. She softened it too late. "Please. Take the salad. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you saw this."